


Dark Corners

by VeteranKlaus



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [10]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-27 07:10:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21388162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeteranKlaus/pseuds/VeteranKlaus
Summary: It's irrational, he knows. But the lights cut out and plunge them all into darkness and although it's no more than a simple power cut, the darkness seems to never end, and from the shadows come the ghosts.Prompt: hyperventilating.
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1385572
Comments: 20
Kudos: 521





	Dark Corners

They've brought down some dusty projector, set it up to display a film on a flat wall, ordered takeaway and brought down some blankets and some pillows. Klaus had claimed one of the couches, previously being sprawled out across it, feet dangling off the edge and crossed by the ankles, only to go for a leak and have Five steal his spot and force him to migrate to the floor instead, sitting on a pillow with a duvet draped over his shoulders, swallowing him whole. 

A simple night in which they all sit together and try to do something relatively normal together and learn how to tolerate one another, how to act like siblings with one another. They'd just gotten through one movie and begun another, this one being one of Luther's picks - some old movie, something Klaus doesn't quite like but is still trying to give it a chance even if he isn't all that sure of what the plot is. There's a woman in elegant clothing that Klaus, quite frankly, believes he could very well pull off just as well as, if not better than her. A luscious garden with beautiful plants, a gothic mansion, winding driveway, so on and so forth. Admittedly, Klaus hadn't thought that this kind of thing would be Luther's favoured type of movie. Then again, he couldn't think of what else would be. Nature documentaries, perhaps. Things about the moon - or, arguably, those would be his least favourite.

Either way Klaus had little to no idea of the plot of the movie let alone the characters names, and he was more focused on picking at the remaining noodles in front of him, twirling strands around his fork and then hurrying to deposit it in his mouth before it can slip right off his fork and make a mess everywhere.

"I'm picking the movie next time," Five grumbles behind him, still in the couch that had been Klaus'. He doesn't even _need_ the entire couch, hardly much taller than Vanya. 

"Last time you did that, we all fell asleep," Klaus states, jabbing his fork in his direction.

"Because you're uncultured," retorts Five. Klaus hums sceptically. 

"I think it's quite the opposite," he comments. "I don't think it was even a movie. I think it was a saga of documentaries based on the novels of a mad man written in a cave in the eighteen-hundreds. That's what it was like. It was not good and you're not picking the movie for a long, long time. Come to think of it, you're not even old enough for this one." He points a hand at the movie case. "Rated for sixteen and up, kid."

Five glares at him, something dark and murderous glinting in his eyes. "Fuck off."

His lips tug upwards in a smirk, his head turning back to face the projector. 

"It was a horrible movie," Ben mutters. Klaus' brow furrows. Five stole his couch and Ben's taken up residence in one of the armchairs while remaining invisible to everyone else. How does he end up with a chair and Klaus is cross-legged on the floor? 

"Ben agrees," Klaus conveys in a hum. He looks down at his hands, flexing his fingers, and then he reaches for his fork again. 

His fingers never find the fork, however, for the all the lights seem to cut out in a quick second, accompanied by the projector. Everything in the corridor outside goes out and with the heavy curtains closed around the windows, they're completely devoured in sudden, chilling darkness.

"Ah, shit," mutters one of his siblings, and there's the sound of chairs creaking, people moving, standing. "Power's out."

And Klaus knows that. Obviously, the power's just out - a blown fuse, maybe, or if he looks outside maybe it's a blackout for the entire block, and usually they hardly ever last for longer than five minutes. It happens infrequently, but it's not a huge deal. The power often simply comes on quickly or someone fixes it - a sibling or perhaps Grace or Pogo, whoever gets to the issue first. Klaus knows this.

And yet there's a chill in his veins because he can't see. He can't see the walls, can't see the furniture, can't see anyone else, can't even see his own hand that he waves in front of his own face and then places onto the floor. He feels, suddenly, so exposed. He feels as if he's sat in the centre of a room, unable to see the approaching danger coming at him from any and all angles. 

When he was in the mausoleum, he always found himself backed into a corner. Of course, being backed into a corner left him with the fact that he had no way out once approached from the front, but being in a corner meant that he couldn't be surrounded, devoured by _them, _and he could see them all (not that he necessarily wanted to) but he couldn't be surprised. No one could sneak up from behind him when there was only a wall against him. 

His hands scramble across the floor out of instinct, searching for - something. He crawls forwards until his hands hit a wall and he follows it down to a corner, packing himself in against a wall and a cabinet - not a cabinet, but a tomb, an old coffin, covered in cobwebs and dust, unsettled for surely decades before Klaus came in, intruding on their resting place, imposing himself, breaking their peace and drawing them forth into unrest and anger again. It's cold, a kind of cold that Klaus, who is always icy to the touch, has never experienced before. It shakes his bones and makes his teeth chatter uncontrollably. Reginald never gave him so much as a blanket. 

The cold is the least of his worries, though. It's always the dark that gets him. Streetlights don't filter in with the heavy doors closed, and even with his eyes adjusting to the dark he can hardly actually see around him. He only knows what the place looks like from the mornings. The stone slabs and the engraved lettering and stained glass that Reginald put bars over when he tried to break out of the windows. Here, now, he can't be sure where anything is - where the doors are, where the windows are, the tombs, the graves. What he can be sure of, however, is that he's not supposed to be here - he ran away from the academy and he wasn't supposed to ever come back, let alone come back to the mausoleum. He can be sure that _they _are here, too, whispers floating to his ears, drifting in from the shadows, coming closer and picking up in volume violently, death rattled gasps and blood gurgling cries, enraged yells. Why is he back here?

His hands clamp down uselessly upon his ears. It hardly ever works to quieten the ghosts - it sounds as if their voices echo in his skulls, reverberates in his very being rather than a real sound. How long will he be here for this time? Hours? Days? Maybe he's been forgotten. Maybe he's already dead. He's dead and he's stuck in this mausoleum and maybe he's been dead for years, conjuring up some fantasy life to try and forget about his death. Is that what those ghosts had done? They had been resting peacefully, living what they thought was their life, only to be disturbed and woken as Klaus, confused and young, had been shoved in by Reginald for the first time, dragging them from their 'lives' and into the painful realm of the dead. And they're furious, so angry, and he's stuck with them. 

He can't breathe. 

If he's a ghost, he doesn't necessarily need to, but he realises now that his ribs ache with the pressure of his lungs violently fighting for air that he simply can't quite seem to get. His ragged gasps, wheezing and loud, battle to overpower the mantra of his name, spit from _their _lips with such hatred and disgust. 

Hands settle onto his, gentle but firm, and warm, so warm, unlike the skeletal, decaying claws of those ghosts, trying to pry them away from his ears and he lets them. It wasn't doing much use to dampen their cries anyway. And they feel so real, so solid, so warm and life like, that he wants to cling onto them, because a ghost can't feel like this, surely, and if he was a ghost then he couldn't feel something so alive, right?

He clings onto the hands, tight, as tight as he can, and they don't waver beneath his touch despite this. 

"Open your eyes, Klaus, you're fine," says a new voice, not one choked thick with blood or bile, or hoarse from screaming. Steady and calm, familiar, arguing the harsh gasps of his own breaths that still seem to grate against his ears; loud things, uncontrollable. Klaus shakes his head. Hearing them is worse enough, but he doesn't want to see them too.

"The lights are on, Klaus, it's okay. Look, look," urges the person, and Klaus wants to tell him that he physically can't. His head swims and if he wasn't dead then maybe he's going to die now, some knight in shining armour finding him in this mausoleum and saving him, only for him to die and be stuck here in the end. Dave, he thinks. 

When he opens his eyes it is not Dave in front of him but rather Diego, kneeling, his head ducked to catch his eyes, and he nods encouragingly. "See? You're okay. Deep breath, Klaus."

He can see Diego. Light bathes over him, bright, almost painfully so after the utter pitch black that they had been drenched in previously, highlighting his face and catching in his eyes. He can see the Academy walls, the pillars and the chandelier twinkling overhead, fixed after Hazel and Cha-Cha's break-in, and the light is on in the corridor outside, and the corridor upstairs, and on the streets outside from what he can catch in the sliver of a gap between the curtains of one nearby window. 

Diego squeezes his hand to bring his eyes back to him. He quirks an eyebrow, exaggerates a deep breath as if Klaus has forgotten how to rather than lost the entire ability to do it. He tries, he does, but it's stolen immediately from him in a wheeze that he can't help, and so is the next one, air clawing itself out of his throat only just, a sliver of air coming down each time. But he can see, and he's not dead, actually, nor is he blind or doomed to an eternity of encroaching darkness and dangers he can't see until it's too late. 

Diego stays steady until his gasps turn into shuddering breaths, turn into longer things that ease the pain in his lungs and ache in his ribs, slowly unwinding, relaxing, until he finds himself breathing somewhat steadily. He forces his hands, trembling, to loosen on Diego's, a grimace twitching his features briefly when he sees pale crescent indents left behind on his skin by his nails, but Diego squeezes his hands as if he might know what he's thinking.

Diego always knew he was scared of the dark, Klaus thinks.

Only when Klaus slowly begins to do so does Diego let him go and sit back, clearing his throat. Klaus swipes his fingers furiously beneath his eyes, ridding them of small, shameful tears, as if getting rid of them will erase any trace of their existence. 

"Are you okay?" Pipes up Vanya, half-sitting awkwardly by the seats, hesitant to get up and come closer but evidently wanting to. Klaus swallows, looking away with warm cheeks. He nods.

"Yeah. Yeah, 'm fine. Fine. Just..." He shakes his head, swallows, and avoids her gaze still. "Fine, thanks."

"What was that about?" Five asks, eying him with furrowed brows. Klaus purses his lips together, eying the chandelier above him, bright, almost painful to look directly at, his eyes squinting. 

"Nothing," he mutters. "Nothing." He tips his head to the film, swipes the back of his hands across his cheeks again. "Let's just watch the film, yeah?"

"Is it the dark?" Luther asks. Klaus' eyes flick towards him with a stricken look and then he looks away again.

"I'm not scared of the dark," Klaus scoffs. He scratches his nails lightly over the back of his hand. "Please-"

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," Allison says, her voice soft, eyes warm and gentle. 

He never did tell them, other than Ben, who sits with a sympathetic look on his face, about the mausoleum. He isn't sure he entirely wants to, a part of him still determined to resolutely shove it down and tell himself it's not a problem.

"Claire - she, uh, she doesn't like the dark," continues Allison, a small smile on her face, a fond look in her eyes. "We got her some fairy lights, hung them around her room - her roof, her wall. A lot just run on batteries, she keeps them on all night." She pauses, something in her face, and then her eyes bounce around the room. "I think they'd look nice around here," she offers.

Klaus sees it for what it is, his fingers picking a thread of his shirt and he offers her a smile, genuine though hesitant, a soft upturn of his lips. 

"Christmas and all that soon too," Diego comments. "Could look nice on the pillars." He goes for a nonchalant tone, casual, though he eyes Klaus for his reaction from the corner of his eye.

He might not want to tell them about the mausoleum, not now, maybe not ever, but he appreciates this. Vanya tells him a shop she can check in the morning and Five goes for the subtle approach of lighting candles for the _scent, _along with the fireplace, rather than the possibility of another power outage, and the pressure that feels a lot of the time like a steadfast constant around his ribs, ever crushing down onto his lungs, unwinds a little further, replaced instead for a duvet draped over his shoulders and a movie of his own pick that no one objects to.


End file.
